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Friday, March 9, 2018

Smoking and drinking: Churchill sets an example today’s Western leaders can learn from

To understand that Western emphasis on human rights is at
best a fig leaf to do business with autocrats whose rule is based on
repression, contrast Winston Churchill’s encounter with Mohammed bin Salman’s
grandfather, King Abdulaziz, with British prime minister Theresa May’s recent
talks with the crown prince.

Meeting
the king for lunch in Cairo in 1945, Mr. Churchill suggested that it was
the “religion of his majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol,” a
reference to the king’s adherence to a puritanical strand of Islam that has
dominated the kingdom since its founding in 1932.

Mr. Churchill, however, made clear that the king’s beliefs
would not deter him from enjoying his smokes and drinks in the monarch’s
presence. The prime minister’s rule of life “prescribes as an absolutely sacred
rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need
be during all meals and in the intervals between them,” Mr. Churchill said.

Enjoying tobacco and alcohol is certain not to have featured
in Ms. May’s talks this week with Prince Mohammed. Human rights and the
humanitarian cost of Saudi Arabia’s ill-fated military intervention in Yemen
did.

In contrast to Mr. Churchill, who, perhaps insensitively and
arrogantly, refused to compromise on his principles and pleasures, Ms. May’s
statements were no more than words in what has become a ritual in interactions
between democratic and autocratic leaders. The autocrats understand democrats’
need to maintain a fig leaf. The public admonishment of their tarnished human
rights records is a small price to pay for the ability to conduct political and
economic business.

The contrast between the two encounters is particularly
significant in an environment in which abuse of human rights is on the rise and
authoritarian and autocratic rule is spreading its wings across the globe from
China to once liberal democracies. Democracy is on the defense.

It raises the question whether the refusal of democracies to
stand up for their principles and pay a price will contribute to their demise
and brutalization in a world in which the lessons of World War Two genocide and
principles of good governance in warfare can be ignored with impunity. Russia
and Iran-backed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s gassing and starvation of
non-combatant Syrian civilians is a case in point.

Ms. May’s fig leaf approach to standing by basic democratic
principles is but the latest incident in a long-standing Western willingness to
pay a heavy price for sleeping with the devil in a bid to gain short-term
geo-political and economic advantage.

Guilt is widespread. Its not just governments. The same is
true for non-governmental organizations such as international sport
associations who for decades tolerated pre-modernity curtailing of women’s
sporting rights in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran by restricting their
criticism to words rather than deeds.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and author and long-time
Saudi-watcher Robert Lacey noted in The
Guardian that “the crown prince doesn’t listen to Saudis – why would he
listen to Theresa May?”

Mr. Khashoggi, long closely associated with Prince Turki
al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to Britain and
the US, who often voices opinions Prince Mohammed does not want to do so
publicly, went into voluntary exile last year on the eve of the crown prince’s
power and asset grab under the mum of an anti-corrup0tion campaign.

One irony of Ms. May’s approach in her talks with Prince
Mohammed is the fact that the kingdom is an exemplary case study of the price
that democracies have paid for their toothless objections to a long-standing
Saudi worldview that was intolerant, supremacist, and anti-pluralistic.

To be sure, Prince Mohammed has begun to shave off the rough
edges of that worldview with his social and economic reforms but has yet to
convey his willingness to achieve a clean break.

Holders of tickets for a concert in Jeddah by Egyptian pop
sensation Tamer Hosny were recently surprised to receive vouchers that warned
that “no
dancing or swaying” would be allowed at the event. "No dancing or
swaying in a concert! It's like putting ice under the sun and asking it not to
melt,” quipped a critic on Twitter.

If anything, Prince Mohammed’s reforms have been
underwritten by repression of any form of dissent.

Anti-death penalty group Reprieve reported that Saudi
Arabia's execution rate had doubled since Prince Mohammed was appointed
crown prince eight months ago. It said 133 people had been executed since June
2017 compared to 67 in the preceding eight months.

Equally fundamentally, the world is still reeling from at
times short-sighted, opportunistic Western support for the export of
Saudi-inspired Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism and at others a willingness to
ignore its impact on Muslim communities across the globe.

The same can be said for support of secular autocracies like
the regime of Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, whose
repression, brutality and failure to deliver public goods and services offer
extremism a fertile breeding ground.

It is also true for states like Baathist Syria and Iraq that
fell into the Soviet orbit during the Cold War, with Iraq. after the demise of
the Soviet Union, enjoying US support during its war against Iran in the 1980s.

Geo-strategist Robert D. Kaplan, writing in Foreign
Policy, argued that Syria and Iraq had descended into the Middle East and
North Africa’s worst mayhems that have caused enormous human suffering and cost
the international community significantly in political, diplomatic, and
security terms because they were artificial, colonial-era geographic constructs.
They lacked the civilizational history, centuries of some kind of statehood,
and deep-seated identities that have helped keep Egypt or Tunisia territorially
intact.

In South Asia, the United States went during the era of
conservative Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq and the US and Saudi-backed war
against the Soviets in the 1980s waged by Afghan mujahedeen as far as to
distribute schoolbooks that propagated Saudi-inspired jihad and precepts of
ultra-conservatism. In doing so it played havoc with Pakistan, a country that
since its birth has struggled with its identity.

Western democracies ignored the fact that Saudi Arabia
invested heavily over decades to push its austere worldview as an anti-dote to
post-1979 Iranian revolutionary zeal.

While not the only factor, the Saudi campaign created an
environment in Pakistan and elsewhere in which militant Islam flourished, societies
became ever more conservative and intolerant, and political violence increased.

Western democracies as well as others, including the
kingdom, are paying a high price in terms of people’s lives and vastly expanded
security to counter extremism and political violence.

Its an open debate whether policies that had been built on
democratic values rather than support for autocracy and intolerant worldviews
could have achieved similar geopolitical victories such as the defeat of the
Soviets in Afghanistan at a lower cost and a reduced threat to those values.

What is certain, however, is the fact that the fallout of
the failure to stand up for democratic values comes at an ever-steeper cost and
uncertainty of how the pendulum will swing.

The unanswered question is whether in terms of cost-benefit
analysis short-term hits resulting from adopting a principled stand may
ultimately be a more reasonable cost and produce greater long-term benefit than
the price of dealing with the fallout of policies that effectively ignore
democratic principles and ultimately are likely to produce ever greater
threats.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile